Trial and Error
by Authoresses Anonymous
Summary: [Billy Roxie] Billy Flynn never lost a case, but that doesn't mean he never made a mistake.
1. First Impressions

_Trial and Error  
An Unlikely Romance Story  
By Vivian Chanson  
_  
_"Billy Flynn never lost a case, but that doesn't mean he never made a mistake."_

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A/N: Just like most of my stories, I have next to no clue where this will lead me, because I've gotten into a rather pesky habit of coming up with the catchy little titles before I have the faintest inkling what story I'm going to slap them at the top of. So, I guess you're going to just have to bear with me on this one. Hope you enjoy the ride! And I really want to give a special little thank you for those of you who have read and reviewed my last Chicago fic, Big Girls Don't Cry, (and for those of you who haven't, you really should!) I was absolutely overwhelmed by all the wonderful reviews I picked up on the last couple chapters in particular. I'm not kidding, I was so happy I was a danger to myself and everyone around me, and it was all your fault! That was a compliment by the way... Fifty reviews!!! Fifty! Well, I won't keep you, now. Please read and review this as well. Compliments are loved; constructive criticism is appreciated. Oh and I should probably say, for the sake of all you internet stalkers out there, the last name Chanson is completely and utterly fictitious, means song in Spanish, and only exists to provide me with a lovely writer's name, so yeah, don't even think about it!

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ONE: The Curious Nature of First Impressions  
  
"Mr. Flynn, I'm Roxie Hart."  
  
Billy Flynn hardly heard her. His latest client was occupying most of his thoughts at the moment, and admittedly, a very miniscule minority of those thoughts had anything to do with her trial, and for that matter, very few of them maintained the icy strictly business persona that he himself took great care to uphold when around clients in physical presence. However, that had absolutely no influence on his personal thoughts.  
  
Despite his completely opposite philosophy when it came to his attire and personal luxuries, Billy Flynn had no particular ambition to have many clients at the same time. He preferred to take them one at a time, but if he was paid otherwise, he could quickly change that philosophy. He went where the water was warm, and currently the Velma Kelly case was boiling hot.  
  
Besides, it didn't look to him like this girl was worthy of his elite services. Taking care not to wrinkle his immaculate suit in the process, Billy turned so his back was facing the speaker, hoping she would get the picture and leave him to his thoughts. Selective hearing was a tool of his that came in quite handy in these situations.  
  
It didn't work. The scrawny shadow of a murderess merely repeated herself and leaned her long and equally scrawny neck almost comically through the bars. For a reason he could not articulate, Billy found the gesture extremely irritating.  
  
Come to think of it, he figured if the notion ever planted itself in that girl's brain, she could easily fit her entire pitiably skeletal body through the bars as easy as clockwork. But Billy found himself highly doubting that notions of any kind passed regularly through this one's mind.  
  
"Who?" he said dismissively, making to continue on his way, and was thoroughly irked to hear Roxie speak again.  
  
"Mama told you about me," she recited sweetly, just like a good little schoolgirl addressing the master.  
  
She seemed to be pulling rather hard on a faint Southern accent, as if trying to make it thicker and more noticeable. It sounded like it hurt pretty badly. Billy vaguely hoped she wasn't about to hurt herself over this, particularly when he was hardly listening to her verbal struggle.  
  
Sometimes Billy Flynn truly wondered why anyone even bothered with first impressions. They were strange and interesting things, first impressions, sometimes seeming to posses a mind of their own that was utterly and completely corrupt of any sense of reality or reason. Everyone fussed and bitched over them, pulled the best evening clothes out of their mothball- lined tombs over them, strived ardently to make every first impression a good and solid one, but what was the point when everyone, could everyone rightly be defined, also knew that first impressions always, even when despite all odds, turned out completely and utterly wrong.  
  
He found himself feeling a bit sorry for her despite himself. The poor little broad had truly never stood a chance. She was way out of her league in this big world.  
  
He mumbled something faintly passable as an assent. "Oh yeah, the cute one."  
  
She beamed at that. Billy flinched; he hadn't meant it as a compliment. Cute was just merely the only word for it. She looked like an overblown child, with her messy, baby-blond hair and wide, naïve, blue eyes, a little girl playing dress-up in her mother's clothes.  
  
Obviously encouraged by this, Roxie batted her eyelashes at him. "I was hoping you might represent me." The forced Southern accent turned more sickeningly sweet by the minute.  
  
What was this act of hers, this feigned innocence? She was so unbearably affected, so fake. If there was one thing Billy Flynn could not stand, it was a liar. And after all these years as a ridiculously successful lawyer, his hatred for them had only grown, along with his ability for recognizing liars when he saw them. Could she honestly think he was buying this sweet, innocent, little Southern Belle act of hers? After all, there was no such thing as an innocent murderess.  
  
After taking such an instant dislike to her, stating his price, and standing back to observe her vivid ranting and stuttering filled him with sadistic pleasure. He took the most savage delight in noting how her pesky Southern twang kept falling out as she muttered unintelligibly.  
  
Then, without warning, she lunged forward and snatched a handful of his cashmere scarf in a bony grip that was surprisingly tight, considering it belonged to a girl who looked as though she could be snapped in two like a water-logged twig. Putting her face way too close to his, she spoke in a low seductive whisper that made Billy rather miss the sugarcoated drawl.  
  
"I'm not very good at this soft of a thing, but maybe we could make some sort of _arrangement_ between us. I can be an awfully good sport." As if on cue, the eyelash-batting reflex kicked back in. Billy wanted to gag.  
  
This was absolutely the final straw. If he had been nauseated from the beginning, it was nothing to how he felt now. So, without further prelude, he awarded Roxie with a reply full of curtness and barely-concealed disgust for her efforts, snatched back his scarf, and stalked away in rising bad humor.  
  
_Thus is the strange and curious nature of first impressions..._

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A/N: Okay, yes I know, it's really more Vivian having a jolly good time making fun of Roxie and being boring in the process than it is Roxie/Billy so far, but don't you worry, because what you're reading this for is on the horizon, even though I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to meet that horizon...Did I mention that reviews help??? 


	2. Gentlemen Prefer Brunettes

TWO: Gentlemen Prefer Brunettes  
  
She traced his face with relish as she crossed her sultry legs, watching him as he watched her, drawing a caricature of his fixation with her dark, dark eyes, the only part of her smooth calm face that was smiling. They laughed at him, midnight pools of pure temptation set in a face that showed no further trace of this hilarity, staring straight through his façade of business and polished severity and laughing in vampish, sadistic amusement at all the lust they saw buried beneath it.  
  
Billy Flynn knew then even more than before, as he stared evenly back into taunting black depths of her dancing eyes, that his first impression of Velma Kelly had been perfectly correct. She was selfish, egotistical, common as sin, but just too damn beautiful for the sanity of any man to cross her path, and she knew it. She also knew that Billy couldn't resist her, and she savagely enjoyed every minute of his seemingly silk-smooth yet awkward pretense.  
  
She lit up a cigarette, uncrossed her legs, and began pacing the room, the light seeping in from the tiny barred windows hitting her raven hair, outlining her beautiful form in golden light. Billy was sure she'd planned it that way somehow. Her red lips curled in an expression that could be read many in ways, as defiance, a smile, a scowl, a grimace, but Billy saw it as a challenge, something he'd never been able to resist.  
  
Billy knew how his priorities fell and would not stand to kid himself about it. Velma Kelly had money; that was what had put her on his list. She was beautiful. That had pushed her to the top of it. The Kelly case and Velma herself were the talk of Chicago, and that was what kept her there.  
  
Billy snapped the briefcase he had been leaning over in the pretense of searching for some vital document or another shut and pulled one of the jailhouse chairs to him, managing to appear completely cool and unruffled, even while learning the hard way that few of the old wooden stools that cluttered the room had more than three legs.  
  
He glanced subtly at Velma to see if she had noticed, but as usual, her face was unreadable. She merely leaned against the wall in a carefully choreographed pose and blew smoke at him.  
  
"Put out that cigarette and sit down, Miss Kelly. We have a lot of work to do regarding your trial." His voice was ice and business with a hefty shot of the irritable haste of the working class.  
  
His statement was met with an arched eyebrow, but Velma acquiesced, her smile, scowl, or whatever it was growing as she dropped the cigarette, put it out with the blade of a heeled pump, and sat down across the flimsy table from him, tauntingly placing her long legs on the table so they were almost directly under Billy's nose.  
  
She was playing with his temptation, pulling at his strings, and Billy wasn't sure he liked being the marionette for a change when he was so accustomed to being the one pulling all the strings himself. However, in the midst of all his laudable attempts to damn back the floods of lust and pure animal instinct that had flooded up under his immaculate suit with the closeness of his stunning client's equally attractive legs, Billy had few thoughts to spare on such metaphorical musings at the moment.  
  
Velma's legs moved slightly across the table with the fluidity of a dancer. Billy could barely keep himself from cursing aloud. Velma blinked at him with the regal irritability of a cat awoken from its mid-afternoon nap. "So?" she purred, fingers curling claw-like around an unlit cigarette in a harsh parody of an infant clutching its pacifier.  
  
Billy acted as if he hadn't heard her, finding refuge from her siren's charms once again in the depths of his briefcase. In his own time, he raised his head and spoke for the mere satisfaction of showing Velma she could not control him.

"First, let me tell you something, Miss Kelly. You can't keep taking your fame for granted like you did today, parading your guilt for all of Chicago to see. You're standing in the middle of a swarm of reporters waving a red flag, for Chrissake! I won't have you jeopardizing this case with your arrogance, Miss Kelly."  
  
Billy was, in truth, not concerned for the case at all, but he badly needed a entrance back into his business-only frame of mind and found stern lecturing the best way to do it. And besides, there was a half-truth to this statement. The way Velma had contradicted him at that morning's press conference had not irked him, however. It had only fueled his surging hunger to put one up on Miss Kelly in this unusual competition of theirs.  
  
"With Mary Sunshine on the job?" Velma let out a guttural snort of skepticism, brows arching spectacularly. "How could we lose?"  
  
"You see, that's the kind of attitude that will lose me this case," Billy shot back smoothly.  
  
Velma let out another deep-throated and quite mirthless laugh. "So it's all about you now, is it?" She lifted her legs from the table and sat upon it as she spoke, crossing her legs extravagantly once more and staring calmly at her attorney, eyes dancing anew. _Check mate._  
  
She used Billy's moment of veiled discomfort to snatch the reins of the conversation. "So, what do _you _suggest I do, Mr. Flynn?" Somehow, she managed to make this question into yet another tease.  
  
"For starters, let me do the talking next press conference before you hurt yourself."  
  
The hilarity in Velma's enigmatic eyes softly spilled down to her rouge-red lips, which curled in a deliciously scornful smile. "Yeah? And what if I don't trust you?"  
  
"Then why did you hire me as your attorney if you don't trust me?" he rebuked curtly. Of course, Billy was asking a question he already knew the answer to, a practice his profession dictated which he had always seen as a bit of an occupational hazard.  
  
Velma had hired him basically because she could. She had hired him to show Chicago that she could afford the prices of the best lawyer in town, and that left an impression as deep as that of any press conference. As much as he loathed to even think it, he was just a pawn in Velma Kelly's little publicity stunt, and admittedly, she would probably do reasonably well in court without him. Not that he'd ever admit that to Velma.  
  
Velma's only response to his question was yet another of her mysterious half-smiles. This smile told Billy two things. She had obviously read his thoughts and was enjoying the contents of them very much. And it told him that Miss Kelly was enjoying this little battle of wits just as much as he was.

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A/N: For those of you who are confused by this little chapter, considering this is a Billy ROXIE fic, it will make sense later, so don't hate me for it! Thank you SO MUCH for all your reviews, and just to let you know, I went to hell and back to get this chapter done before I leave for Toronto, so please please please please please review this!! It's my birthday...Well it was a couple hours ago anyways. (Puppy face) Okay, okay I'll stop now... 


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